The UltraViolet Initiative hasn't exactly been the iTunes-killer Hollywood had hoped for. The File-Locker system, designed to simplify the process of owning one piece of content across multiple formats, has floundered in its first few months with poor reviews, unhappy customers and little industry support. But now that Amazon and Samsung have both invited UltraViolet over to the cool kid's table, it might actually have a shot.

A little UltraViolet background, since not a lot of people use it yet. UV is basically an online storage system that allows users who have purchased a film—either as a download or as a hard copy—to play it on any desktop or mobile device. It employs a "household account," rather than a conventional individual license, that allows up to six users to access UV content on any of 11 registered devices: phones, tablets, game consoles, connected Blu-ray players, and the like.

Amazon announced today that it's going to support UltraViolet rights for an unnamed studio. Basically, all that means i that if you buy a digital movie from Studio X through Amazon, you'll be able to adjust your sharing settings however you like from your own personal UV locker.

On the physical media side of things, Samsung's going to add "disc to digital" authentication technology to its Blu-ray players starting later this year. This will allow users to add digital versions of DVDs that they've already purchased to their locker; however, they'll will have to pay a nominal fee if they wish to upgrade their DVD version to digital HD.

Will the big-name partners help pull UltraViolet out of its funk? Many initial adopters have been less than pleased with the numerous steps needed to actually get a movie out of the locker. To play a movie on an iPad, for example, the user would have to create not one, but two new online accounts—for UltraViolet itself and also for Flixter. It's not clear whether Amazon or Samsung are going to help streamline that process at all; but they'll certainly publicize the hell out of it. [The Verge - Yahoo - PC Mag - GigaOm]